Cognition and Its Broad Functions - Essay Example

COGNITION AND EMOTIONS Psychology as a discipline, explores human behavior in various perspectives. It values respect, sensitivity, contextual meaning, human dignity and social responsibility. Although human beings are unique and diverse, they give importance to social relationships at different stage of their lives. During childhood developmental stage, they find gratification in interacting with friends and new acquaintances. As they grow, their life and works become more connected to the events around the community; able to comprehend thoughts of other people, ideas and feelings. Cognition and its Broad Functions Cognition is the process or act of knowing and able to make some judgment about it. It is very broad which include a complicated mental process encompassing functions like perception, memory, learning, and problem solving. Cognition includes more than few elements or processes which all work to describe the manner by which knowledge is built up and also how judgments of people are made. The elements related to these processes are: perceiving, recognizing, reasoning, problem solving, conceptualizing, learning, memory, and language (Scienceclarified, 2008). The individual’s ability to comprehend or the cognition ability is necessary for a scientific understanding what human behavior is all about. According to the investigations of various experts, mental processes like association, recall process, and understanding about language are based on the physical relations or interactions of people with their environment, instead of the body which supports the mind; it is basically viewing the body as a support system for a mind. Cognitive structures advance from perception and action like a software (Turing, 1950) which can run on different hardware systems. Human mind can manipulate abstract symbols based on the interactions of people around via his sensory organs as well as greatly coordinated effectors. Wilson (2002) has six various claims about cognition: 1) cognition is situated; 2) cognition is time pressured; 3) cognition is off-loaded onto the environment; 4) the environment is a component of the cognitive system; 5) cognition is for action; 6) an offline cognition is body based. He further emphasized that, sensorimotor functions which evolved for action as well as perception have been preferred for the application of offline cognition. Therefore, it is logical to say that, cognition is based on the functions of human body and interdependent with the environment. Some current experiments have demonstrated that perceptual as well as motor representations, take part in higher roles of the cognitive processes like the activities which take place in retrieving information from memory and understanding language (Pecher, Zeelenberg, & Barsalou, 2003; Glenberg & Kaschak, 2002; Spivey, Tyler, Richardson, & Young, 2000; Zwaan, Stanfield, & Yaxley, 2002). Enhancement of Cognitive Abilitites A recent online survey conducted by Nature magazine from 1,400 scientist reader found out that, one out of five admitted stimulant users engage in taking specific “enhancement” thinking that it can boost brain power. Meanwhile, 80 percent replied that they thought such drug utilization should be permitted. The said revelations obviously suggests a well-known acceptance of "cognitive enhancement" through pharmaceutical means, at least in the midst of scientists interested as much as necessary to respond to a particular online survey (MSN Health and Fitness, 2009). Dimensions of Emotion An individual person is not whole in the absence of his emotional being. Emotions according to Lazarus (1991) are multi- component reaction tendencies which unfold over quite short time spans. The emotion process starts with an individuals assessment about the personal meaning of various antecedent events in which is called the "adaptational encounter" or "person–environment relationship". Unlike the mood, emotion is triggers response tendencies like facial expressions, subjective experience, and physiological changes (Oatley & Jenkins, 1996). An emotion also is not synonymous with affective traits, such as optimism, hostility, and neuroticism. Affective traits predispose individuals on the way to experiencing convince emotions (Rosenberg, 1998). There are current models of emotion that are typically designed to explain emotions in general. One model of emotion is associated to the specific action tendencies which indicate that certain emotion results to a specific action (Frijda, 1986; Lazarus, 1991; Levenson, 1994; Oatley & Jenkins, 1996; Frijda, Kuipers, & Schure, 1989; and Tooby & Cosmides, 1990). Examples, the tendency to escape is due to fear; the urge to attack is triggered by anger, and so on. Futhermore, specific action tendencies (Levenson, 1992, 1994), as well as physiological changes go together or work hand-in-hand. Fredrickson and Levenson (1998) said, negative and positive emotions are both not isomorphic but specific action tendencies known for positive emotions are not clear and not specific. Positive emotions and associated positive conditions are linked to widen cognition, scopes of attention, enhanced physical, intellectual as well as social resources (Fredrickson, 1998). Factors affecting Emotional Dimension Organization behavior can be influenced by emotions in a number of ways directly or indirectly. Most theories of emotions distinguish that there is a relationship between specific emotions as well as specific types of behaviors (Fredrickson, 1998; Levenson, 1994). In addition, Lazarus (1999) came up with a complementary view sustaining that prototypical events go ahead to specific emotions. As stated, emotions like fear, anger, love, and pity may each set off a unique prototypical succession of events involving core affect. The positive or negative emotions can be affected by emotion-behavior relationship (Fossum & Barrett, 2000), since positive emotions are by and large associated with slower and more varied responses as compared to negative emotions (Fredrickson, 1998). Frequently, negative emotions regularly have tough associations with particular types of behavior, and are likely to generate such behaviors with negligible guidance from associated cognitive processing since responses occur too abrupt for much processing to occur. For this reason, regulating the experience of physically powerful negative emotions is an essential aspect of behavioral regulation. For several reasons, positive emotions have obtained less attention than negative emotions; they are less differentiated; not connected with particular problems needing solutions, and are not connected with specific action tendencies considered to be required for survival (Fredrickson, 1998). On the value of positive emotions, Fredrickson (1998) was able to develop a “broaden-and-build” viewpoint. She sustained that positive emotions are significant in a sense that they make wider attention and produce situations where cognitive, social and physical resources can be built. A specific example to this is the idea that joy promotes play that helps to build social, physical, and intellectual skills. Likewise, contentment expands oneself, the worldview and directs the urge to incorporate; love elicits other positive emotions; solidifies individual and also social resources. On the other hand, emotions play a fundamental role in motivation. The personality differences in emotional tendencies work together with organizational events as well as social interactions to succumb emotional reactions which importantly shape an individual’s aims and the perseverance of effort even in the course of obstacles. Congruently, a person’s encounters of negative emotion are inevitable, but, at times useful. Even so, negative emotions can as well generate a wide array of problems, both for individuals and the society. Fear and anxiety, for example, stimulate phobias; other forms of anxiety disorders (Ohman, 1993); together with acute and also the chronic stress may give and take immune functioning and later create vulnerabilities to stress-associated physical disorders ( OLeary, 1990). As observed, for some individuals, grief and sadness may enlarge into unipolar depression (Nolen-Hoeksema, et. al, 1993), and when it becomes severe, can result to loss of work productivity (Coryell, et. al, 1993), immune-suppression (OLeary, 1990), and suicide ( Chen & Dilsaver, 1996). Poor management of anger has been implicated in the origin or source of heart disease (Fredrickson, Maynard, et al., 1999; Barefoot, Dahlstrom, & Williams, 1983; Williams et al., 1980; and Scheier & Bridges, 1995); some cancers (Greer & Morris, 1975 & Eysenck, 1994); aggression and also violence, especially among boys and men (Buss, 1994). In addition, emotional processes can be implicated in the accomplishment of multifaceted and longer-term goals. People’s differences in the directive of different emotions, like anger and boredom, take part in a central role in the effective quest of goals which involve sustained effort. Individual differences can be predominantly important in the forecast of training outcomes as well as of the performance in jobs that involve considerable autonomous functioning. There are also other factors which play important function in the elicitation and expression of emotions like the motivational process. The cognitive appraisal is also another example which posits the critical magnitude of appraisals of personal meaning for the observance of emotional responses. In isolation, the emotional significance of a particular event depends on the coverage to which that event is evaluated as suitable to the individual’s goal concerns. Emotions and Social Processes An important characteristic of emotion-evoking stimuli and emotional reactions is that they are often very fast, frequently producing initial effects before conscious, symbolic-level processing can occur. This aspect may have had critical survival value when fast reactions were needed to avoid threats, but it also has an important social consequence. That is, it allows emotions to serve as a rapid and ubiquitous guide to social interactions. As Levenson (1994) noted, facial expressions, voice tone, and posture communicate how we feel to others and can draw us to or repel us from others. This argument has been developed into a social-functional approach to emotions, which posits that emotions coordinate interactions related to formation and maintenance of social relationships (Keltner & Kring, 1998). Three assumptions underlie this theory: (1) Expression of emotions signals socially relevant information, (2) evoked responses in others are associated with benefits, and (3) emotions serve as incentives for other people’s actions. For example, Keltner and Kring note that the experience and expression of embarrassment evoke forgiveness in others and produce reconciliation after social transgressions. Because emotions are communicated and perceived rapidly, such processes often occur outside awareness, but they can still have an impact on important social processes, such as trust in others, perceptions of honesty, interpersonal attraction, and group commitment. The capacity to read and display emotions can be learned explicitly (emotional labor is a good example), but normally such learning may be largely implicit, reflecting regularities in family, ethnic, organizational, or national cultures. To the extent that rules for displaying and reading emotions are hard-wired, they reflect a repository for the influences of evolution, as Levenson (1994) notes. However, to the extent that they are learned, they provide a means of transmitting a culturally based structure for social interactions or organizational processes (see Ashforth and Saks, Chapter Ten, this volume). Extra efforts are needed for an effective understanding or changing social interactions at work need to be attuned to this continuous, often implicit emotional structure. Emotions and Information Processing Research over the past years (McCraty, 2005) conducted by the Institute of HeartMath has revealed new facts about physiology of emotions, learning, and performance. According to the study, emotional stress unconstructively affects learning and performance. Additionally, sustained stress as well as negative emotions can result in the misalignment of brain and the same with nervous system activity. It also inhibits advanced cognitive processes essential for functions like attention, abstract reasoning, problem solving, memory recall, and creativity. When students come to school carrying high levels of emotional stress, there is a possibility that the very cognitive facilities important for memory, learning, as well as effective academic performance will be impaired. In contrast, there is a research available indicating that, physiological activity is associated with sustained positive emotions which enhances synchronization of neurological actions and augments the cognitive functions which generate rational creativity, thought, and intentional action. In real meaning, positive emotions are found to have level up to a distinct mode or ways of physiological functioning (McCraty, Atkinson, Tomasino, & Bradley, 2005). Conclusions To appreciate the interaction of emotions and cognitions, it is a big help to think of the mind like a “wet computer”, a spongelike accumulation of neurons in a continually changing and close by differentiated chemical medium. In that specific computational hardware, the information processing properties modifed as different chemicals are provided to or depleted from the physically distinct subsystems. Therefore, processing networks can be widen or narrowed and ended abound with sensitive by neurochemical changes in relation to the hormones involved during emotional reactions (Globus & Arpaia, 1994). For example, fear liberates stress-related hormones (for example; glucocorticoids and epinephrine). The moment glucocorticoids reach the brain, it will inhibit the hippocampal-dependent (the conscious or declarative) memory except improve the amygdala-dependent (or emotional) memory. 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